GEOGRAPHICA
GEOGRAPHY
Pole Position
It's happened on the first of
January for the past decade.
Scientists at the United States'
Amundsen-Scott South Pole Sta
tion use the global positioning
system to set a new marker post
at the geographic South Pole.
Over the course of 365 days,
shifting ice moves the marker
about 30 feet from Earth's south
ernmost spot. Previous years'
posts show the ice's progress
over time. Though no marker
remains from Roald Amundsen's
expedition to the Pole in 1911,
his would now be some 3,000
feet away from the current
marker-and under more than
30 feet of snow.
ARTBY JEFFMOORES
ASTRONOMY
Brave New Worlds
Fifteen gas giants spotted 1,500 light-years from Earth
in the Orion Nebula (above) have forced scientists to
ponder the definition of a planet. British astronomers
Philip Lucas and Patrick Roche found the bodies orphaned in
space rather than orbiting parent stars. They likely began to
form as stars themselves but never grew hot enough to trigger
nuclear fusion. Instead they fizzled into warm globes of hydro
gen more than eight times the mass of Jupiter.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC * JULY 2001